


a void-cut shape

by rukafais



Category: Hollow Knight (Video Game)
Genre: + a bunch of dream warriors, Gen, a sad lonely child has basically nothing but ghosts for company for most of the journey whoops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-20 02:13:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16546853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rukafais/pseuds/rukafais
Summary: Everywhere they go, death follows. A step behind in this broken shell of a kingdom.But that is simply their nature, after all. To take the burdens of others, no matter how heavy. Sadnesses and regrets they could drown in.





	a void-cut shape

**Author's Note:**

> Reposted from Tumblr. 
> 
> I'm sad about dream ghosts always ok

The first ghost they fight is a corpse interred, buried deep. The name comes to them quickly, a harsh and hard sound as sharp as the blades he still uses in battle.

His voice is a different thing altogether. Sick and mournful and low. When he speaks to them, he is whisper-soft and his voice cracks and aches with a pain he still feels, even though he is long gone, and his body rots in the ground.

His head is bowed, even the memory of his body broken once more, as he floats there. He says _I was a fool_ and the masked child before him says nothing at all to confirm whether that truly is the case, and he is left to make his own judgment.

They sit under the floating, bedraggled remnants of his cloak and wait until he fades away completely, light plunged into water. They remember something they learned from their travels; caring for the graves of the dead gives their wayward spirits peace. To tend to their graves soothes their pain and anger; they understand that someone has not forgotten them.

They brush the horned grave free of dust and bring water soaked into a tattered cloak to make it clean, and they think that they can feel Xero’s tired thankfulness, somewhere inside.

( _They stand before a vacant throne in a pale, ephemeral dream and they think they feel something that is almost a little like spiteful, bitter pride. It is not theirs; theirs runs hot and angry at a father who ruined their life.  
_

_It is a moment of solidarity, of connection, between two betrayed by the same person._ )

\------

This one has no name they can recall, no name she can recall (because they only know as much about the ghosts they put to rest as the ghosts themselves do). She must have had one, because she is a person, and people have names, but it is lost. No matter how they listen, how they search in the dark with lantern held high, it is lost.

She weeps, her eyes even emptier than theirs. Her face is scratched and stained, and in it they read the only story they can from her frantic words and actions, something that twists realisation sickeningly within them.

No, her eyes are not empty.

She disposed of them long before she died.

Her voice fills the still air in the temple; a lament, a last goodbye, a song of pain. If they were able to cry, they would have.

But they cannot. They cannot make a single sound; even their breaths, such as they are, are entirely silent. They simply bow their head, sink to the floor, let the pain drown inside them where everything seems to drown inside them.

_Take us there, please. A place where light cannot haunt us, a place without dreams_ , she whispers, her voice spent and broken and weary, and they do.

They like to think that perhaps she could see the world through their eyes now, how the kingdom has changed, but they doubt it would bring her any joy. Still, they linger in places they find beautiful, and sometimes they think they hear her singing a different tune.

\-----------

It’s the ones that don’t understand they’re dead that hurt the most.

He says _the world is not kind to the weak_ as he gazes, seemingly uncomprehendingly, upon his own dead body and their chest clenches so tight that it hurts. Even lacking a heart (even being told they lack feelings, that they are perfectly empty), they still respond.

Even if they had a voice to speak with, they would not be able to bring themselves to tell him he was dead, that the person he speaks so poorly of is himself.

Or perhaps he already knows, deep down, and he scorns his own weakness, and they’re not sure what would be worse.

(He says _I knew he had not forgotten brave Galien_ and the emptiness inside them _aches_ because they know by now that the King did forget, or never found him worth acknowledging at all because to forget implied that the Pale King cared.

There were only a few things the Pale King ever cared about. A warrior striving for his attention was not one of them.)

They can’t possibly take his body out of this place, nor his weapon. Too unwieldy, too heavy, for them to lift and carry and bring to a better resting place. But they sit there for a long, long time, weaving glowing strands into clumsy crowns, and adorn him with crowns of his own.

It feels like _too little_ , it feels like _not enough._ He doesn’t understand why they are frustrated, and they don’t know how to explain.

In a better world perhaps Galien would have been a Great Knight, like he wished for, but they cannot provide him with dreams of that ideal, only dreamless sleep. An end to his pain and his struggles for better or worse.

They sit by him for a while longer and simply rest without thinking too much about anything; he thanks them for the fight they had granted him, tells them that he was happy, that they were a wonderful warrior.

It almost feels like he is still alive. 

( _They cannot provide a dream of what could be, and so a sad, mute child sits by a shattered corpse and takes cold comfort from the ghost that lingered there._ )

They rise and leave the body behind, eventually. Hoping that the light will keep the creatures that live there away, that nothing ever comes to touch him, that he can sleep peacefully forever.

_If nothing else, give him this,_ they think, defiant, at the chittering, claustrophobic darkness.

\------

_You are the darkness, come to consume me,_ Markoth says, weary and bitter, and the child that stands before him looks away, cloak clutched tight.

It’s so cold here. But it feels so much colder when the ghost in front of them refuses to acknowledge them as a person, sees them only as a force, some impersonal reaper who doesn’t care about his death.

They care. They care about the broken body they’ve found here, alone at the edge of the world. It must be so lonely, they think, and they are surprised when he responds.

(Moths are always more clear-sighted about true nature.)

_I chose this, child,_ he says, _don’t be sad for me._

They are sad anyway and it is a mutual incomprehension between them, but in a way the words are his way of saying sorry.

(They receive a memory, of clinging to a bridge over an empty abyss, of watching their sibling, so much smaller then, leave. Knowing what they will grow up to become, knowing what will happen, knowing what has happened, knowing it cannot be changed--

_don’t leave_

_don’t go_

and they sense his horror, his apology at their heartache. Void they are; that is undeniable. An empty, impersonal darkness they are not.)


End file.
